Salen‐Based Conjugated Microporous Polymers for Efficient Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Exploring high‐performance electrocatalysts, especially non‐noble metal electrocatalysts, for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is critical to energy storage and conversion. Herein, we report for the first time that conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) incorporating salen can be used as OER electrocatalysts with outstanding performances. The best OER electrocatalyst (salen‐CMP‐Fe‐3) exhibits a low Tafel slope of 63 mV dec−1 and an overpotential of 238 mV at 10 mA cm−2. DFT and Grand Canonical Monte Carlo calculations confirmed that the significantly improved electrocatalytic properties can be attributed to the intrinsic catalytic activity of the salen moiety and the enrichment effect of the pore structures. This work demonstrates that salen‐based conjugated polymers are a type of metal‐coordinated porous polymer that show excellent catalyst performance. What a performance! Conjugated microporous polymer (CMP) frameworks incorporating metal–salen units have proven to be excellent candidates as high‐performance catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (see figure). Both DFT calculations and experimental studies have shown that the catalytic activity of the metal sites in the salen–CMP system declines in the order Fe > Co > Ni > Mn > V > Sc > Cu > Zn > Ti.